Battery

Colonial Fleet

The flak field from Galactica's large turrets (Scattered)

On Colonial warships, a battery is a group of large gun turrets working together. A battery may consist of any number of gun turrets .

On Pegasus four forward guns are grouped to a battery (The Captain's Hand) . Galactica is armed with 24 gun turrets on her dorsal surface, with 2 guns each. It is likely, that the term "battery" refers to several of these turrets acting in concert.

Pegasus firing her forward batteries

These cannons are used in two ways:
One is to shoot down enemy fighters, missiles, or contain them away from the battlestar within the cannons' exploding ordnance. The ordnance sends exploding metal fragments at high velocity, which can shear enemy fighters or incoming missiles. The point-defenses keep the enemy at a distance, allowing the battlestar's Viper forces to safely deploy and engage the enemy.
The other is as a battlestar's main offensive weapon against capital ships. Salvos from the main cannons are extremely lethal to the unarmored Cylons basestars, which furthermore posess no such weapons or point-defense themselves (Resurrection Ship, Part II, Exodus, Part II).

Ammunition

The large turrets found on Colonial battlestars fire large-caliber flak ammunition (Scattered). These shells are too large to be loaded quickly and efficiently by crew members, and as such are loaded by mechanical hoists (33).

The massive recoil caused by firing these flak rounds makes it impossible for the cannon to have a fast rate of fire like the point-defense turrets also found on battlestars.

Firing Solution

When engaging enemy targets over any kind of distance, a firing solution must be obtained. This requires several pieces of information to be input to a battery's fire-control computer, including the target's speed, course, and range; and the firing platform's speed and course. The velocity of the shells would be known, and is constant, given that there is no air friction in the vacuum of space. The resulting computation would allow the gun captains to accurately aim their weaponry to such a degree that firing will result in a probable hit.

Operation

As with modern naval cannon, Colonial gun batteries have several modes of operation.

• Salvo Fire: this calls for a battery, or elements of a battery, to fire simultaneously at a single target. (The Captain's Hand)
• Full Attack Mode: a battery's commander (Gun captain, 33) will target and engage targets of oppertunity.

On Mercury-class battlestars, gun batteries can be set to one of several automatic firing modes (Exodus, Part II). It is unknown if the gun batteries on older battlestars have this capability, though it is unlikely given the inferior computing abilities of these vessels.

There are likely other modes of operation for these batteries, but none have been explicitly stated on screen.

The devastating effect Colonial batteries can have on a Cylon basestar (Resurrection Ship, Part II)

Limitations

Since its turrets are relatively slow to traverse, a battlestar's main guns would be a poor choice for engaging enemy fighters which are small, fast and extremely maneuverable. They would also be impractical for defending against enemy missile attacks, which would be more suceptible to attack from point defense weapons or Vipers.

The turrets' slow rate of fire also means that a single turret, if left to operate alone - either due to damage, power failure or any other events - may not be a very effective method of attack. It is for this very reason that the turrets are grouped in batteries.